Poisoned Blue (Jamie Stanley Crime Scene Investigation Series Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter Two

“Did you get hold of the
husband?” Jamie asked when she walked into the station after her lunch break.

“Uh huh.” Carl
nodded. She could hear his fingers working over the computer keyboard.

Although there
were more questions that she wanted to ask, she didn’t say anything else. She
didn’t want to distract him.

“Does he have
an alibi?” Danny asked, walking in just behind Jamie. The door was open and
sound travelled a long way in the otherwise empty street.

“Several. He
was in back-to-back business meetings all weekend and when he wasn’t, he was in
the pub. He shared a room with Robert Cash on Saturday night. Left the hotel
earlier this morning.” Carl looked up from his computer screen.

“So we’ll be
able to talk to him as soon as he gets back.” Danny picked a bit of lettuce out
of his teeth.

“We’re meeting
him at a hotel this afternoon. He says he can’t make it back to the house,
because he has business to attend to this afternoon. It turns out that what the
cleaner said wasn’t exactly accurate. He wasn’t just away for the weekend, he’s
meant to be away for the whole week.”

“Odd. You’d
think he’d have cancelled whatever business he had to do after hearing of his
wife’s death.”

Carl shrugged.
“Some of these business men think of nothing other than business. Families come
second.”

Jamie sat at
her desk listening to the conversation running between the two men.

“Have you
found any information about our victim?” Danny peered over Carl’s shoulder to
look at the computer screen.

“It says here,
Sara June Longacre aged thirty-three.” His eyes scanned over the information
he’d sourced earlier. “Married in July 2012.” Carl continued to skim-read the
information reading out the bits that they needed to know – there wasn’t an
awful amount of information available. “That’s about it.”

“Have you
found out where she works?”

“Not yet. I’m
hoping the husband might be able to tell us that.”

“When will we
get the results from the post mortem?” Jamie asked when there was a gap in the
conversation.

“Later this
afternoon.”

She felt
helpless sitting at her desk while the other two chatted amongst themselves,
discussing the information that Carl had found while they were out at lunch.
She wished she could get more involved.

“Are you sure we’re in the right
hotel?” Carl asked.

“Yes, I’m
absolutely certain. One hundred percent.” Danny shook his head to move his hair
out of his eyes, Jamie was about five minutes away from telling him to get a
haircut.

“And it’s
definitely room 402?”

“Yes … or it
could have been room 302.” Danny pursed his lips like he always did when he was
thinking. Carl had told him time and time again to write the details down
before he forgot them, but he never did.

“Ok, let’s
split up. You and Jamie go to room 302, and I’ll stay up here.”

“Are you
looking for me? Neil Longacre, husband of Sara Longacre.” Neil held his hand
out.

“Yes, yes we
are. Detective Sergeant Daniel Brookes.” Danny ignored the man’s outstretched
hand. “Detective Inspector Jamie Stanley and Carlton Green.” Danny pointed to
each of them in turn.

“I see. Well,
sorry I’m late. The traffic was, well, that’s not important. Come in, come in.”
Neil swiped the key card in front of the sensor on the left hand side of the
door and held the door open for them.

“So who’s in
charge of this investigation?” Neil chucked his briefcase on the floor by the
door and kicked it under a nearby table.

“I am,” Danny
said.

“Cause of
death?”

“I’m sorry, it
looks as though your wife was poisoned. We won’t know anything for sure until
the post mortem results get back this afternoon, but we’re pretty sure it was
poisoning.”

Neil looked at
the floor to gather himself together.

“So, what are
you doing to find the murderer? Have you got any suspects yet?” He looked Danny
straight in the eyes as if he could mentally pull the information out of him.

“At the moment
we’re still gathering evidence.”

“Does anyone
else want a coffee?”

“No thank
you,” Danny said. The others shook their heads.

Neil turned
his back on the team. “So I assume you have some questions to ask.”

Danny nodded.
“We need to clear up some basic information. It won’t take long.”

“Your wife was
home alone … ” Carl interjected.

“I left for a
business meeting early on Friday morning. It was in London, so I decided to
stay over night instead of driving back and forth everyday.”

“So, why
didn’t you come home last night if you didn’t have any meetings this morning?”

“The last
meeting finished at ten o’clock. Sara always tells me not to drive in the dark,
so I stayed an extra night. This morning, there wasn’t time for me to go home
before my meeting this afternoon, so I came straight here. What does that have
to do with anything? You don’t think I did it do you? Husband, chief suspect, I
get it, but I’ve been happily married to my wife for a year now, and I have at
least half a dozen alibis. Perhaps you could stop wasting time and chase the real
killer before he or she gets away.”

“These are
just routine questions.” Danny stepped in.

“I know. I’m
sorry. It’s just … it’s my fault isn’t it. It’s always my fault. If I hadn’t
gone away for business none of this would’ve happened. Sara hated me going away
for work so often, she told me not to go, but I did it anyway. If I’d just
listened to her … ” Neil’s voice trailed off.

“Who has a key
to your house?” Carl asked. He really didn’t like dealing with emotional
people.

Neil looked
up, surprised at the question.

“Just myself,
Sara and Marion.”

“Have any of
the neighbours got a key? Maybe you gave them one in case you forgot yours and
got locked out one day,” Danny suggested.

“No. No one
else has a key. We don’t know the neighbours well enough to give them a key.
Although we’ve lived in the house since we got married, we haven’t really
spoken to anyone in the area. Sara always said that we should have made more of
an effort to get to know them, but they really weren’t our type of people.”

“What do you
mean by that?”

“They thought
they were better than us. They all have lots of money and pretty houses and
expensive cars. They didn’t like the state of our house.” Neil tipped boiling
water into a mug with coffee granules in it.

“What about
Sara’s family? Was there any conflict there?”

“Sara didn’t
have any family. Her parents’ were old when they had her and her grandparents’
passed away before she was born. She didn’t have any siblings and her parents
were killed in a car accident three months ago.”

“Was the
accident suspicious?”

“I don’t know.
They looked into it for a week or so and then the case just kind of
disappeared. I told Sara we should’ve tried to find out more, but she was just
wanted to push it to the back of her mind and move on. She never really spoke
about her parents or the accident after that.”

After a few more questions, they
left. Neil didn’t seem to have any more information for them for the time being,
but he’d given them several trails to check out.

Until the
investigation was over he’d be living in the hotel room which didn’t bother him,
because he was booked in to the hotel until the end of the week anyway. Neil
watched them walking through the hotel reception area. He could see that they
were talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“The only
person who has a key to the house other than him is Marion, so she had access
to the house, but what motive would an elderly lady have for murdering her employer?”
Danny held open the hotel door and waved Carl and Jamie through before him.

“He also confirmed
what Marion said about her being promoted. Maybe someone thought they deserved
the promotion more than she did and wanted to get their own back on her.” Jamie
scrapped her hair up into a ponytail.

“Then there’s
the parents’ car crash. Maybe someone killed the parents and has come back for
the daughter.”

“Or maybe he’s
just giving us false trails to cover up what he did,” Carl added.

“He has alibis
for the whole weekend. There’s no way he did this.”

“I don’t know.
He seems a bit odd to me. I wouldn’t cross him off the suspect list.”

Danny rolled
his eyes at Carl. He never wanted to cross anyone off the suspect list until
the case was closed. If Danny let Carl have his say they’d spend most of their
time chasing the wrong person.

“To me he
seems like an upset husband who wants to know who killed his wife. Yes he was a
bit sharp, but wouldn’t you be? He’s blaming himself for her murder. He thinks
that if he’d been at home with her instead of on one of his business trips he’d
have been able to save her. He feels responsible for her death. It can’t be
easy having that kind of weight on your shoulders.”

The two men
stared at Jamie, and she stopped talking. They walked from the hotel to the car
in silence.

Once Neil saw
the police car disappear down the road he went outside, climbed into his car
and drove off in the opposite direction. He was supposed to be somewhere right
now. He’d had no idea their questions would take so long.

He put his
foot down on the accelerator and sped off twenty miles per hour over the speed
limit. The quicker he got there the less trouble he’d be in for being late.

Chapter Three

“So where do you display the
information you’ve collected?” Jamie asked. At her old job they had a corkboard
to pin information on, but there wasn’t anything like that here.

“We don’t
really do that,” Danny said.

“We just keep
all the information in a file,” Carl added.

Jamie looked
confused. “Well, I can’t work like that. I have to be able to see everything
together in one place at the same time.”

Danny and Carl
shrugged in unison.

Jamie looked
around the room for something she could use to stick the information on while
Danny and Carl carried on with what they were doing, seemingly oblivious to
Jamie’s presence.

“I’m going
out,” Jamie said after a few minutes.

Danny and Carl
grumbled something.

Jamie shook
her head and walked out, grabbing her handbag out of the bottom drawer of her
desk on her way.

“Where’s she
going?” Carl asked.

Danny
shrugged.

“The post
mortem results should be here soon.”

Jamie kicked open the door to the
station. It banged against the wall causing both Danny and Carl to look up.

“A little help
would be greatly appreciated,” Jamie said in amongst groans.

Neither Danny
nor Carl moved.

“Thank you so
much,” she said, heaving a cardboard box through the door. After hitting it on
the doorframe a few times, she managed to get it inside and leaned it against
the wall. She sighed and slammed her handbag down on the desk.

“What’s in the
box?” Carl asked, interested now that he couldn’t be of any help.

“A whiteboard.
Will one of you help me put it together? Please.”

Carl suddenly
lost interest again.

“Fine.” She
took a pair of scissors out of the top drawer of her desk and opened them.
After running the blade along the crease in the sticky tape where one of the
cardboard flaps met the other, she put the scissors down and pulled the flaps
apart.

“You two are
so aggravating. I just need a little help.” Jamie fought to turn the box upside
down.

“It doesn’t
look like you need help,” Carl said as the whiteboard covered in a layer of
bubble wrap slid out of the box onto the stone floor with a clatter.

“Well a little
help would’ve been nice.” Leaving the whiteboard on the floor blocking the
entrance, she took hold of a bag of metal pipes which had also fallen out of
the box. “How hard can it be?” she muttered, trying to push memories of putting
up tents when she went on camping holidays with her parents out of her mind.
Her mum and dad’s tent was the best quality one and went together easily. She
and her brother had individual tents which they were left to put up on their
own. Her tent was always the one which blew away or collapsed during the night.

After spending
five minutes watching Jamie trying to assemble the base for the white board to
stand on, Carl said, “the post mortem results came in while you were out.”

She looked
furious. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“You were … busy.”

“What does it
say?” She dropped the poles on the floor and walked over to Carl’s desk.

“Arsenic
trioxide poisoning. They aren’t certain on the time of death, but it was
sometime Saturday morning.”

“So, it was in
the drink?”

“No. The glass
showed no signs of poisoning.”

“What?” Jamie
leaned over his shoulder to read the information for herself. “But arsenic trioxide
is most fatal when consumed through food or drink. We didn’t find any other
glasses.”

“And there was
nothing in her stomach.”

“But, that
doesn’t make sense.”

Danny laughed.
“I don’t think this is going to be a straight forward case.”

“There’s one other
thing,” Carl said, “she was pregnant … with twins.”

Jamie gasped.
“Why didn’t her husband say anything about that?”

“I don’t know.
I guess we’ll have to pay him another visit.”

Jamie stifled
a yawn.

“Why don’t you
and Carl go home? It’s way past time. I can lock up,” Danny said.

Jamie glanced
at her watch.
Damn
, she thought,
Alex was due to arrive at my house
half an hour ago.
“Thanks Danny,” she said, grabbing her handbag and coat.
“I’ve got to run.”

Luckily the
station was only a five minute walk away from her house. When she’d been
looking for a place to rent she’d chosen the house specifically for that
reason. She wanted to be more eco-friendly and had decided that, while in the UK, she wasn’t going to own a car.

She flipped
open her mobile. “Alex,” she said, “I’m so sorry. I lost track of time.”

“Typical,” he
joked, “putting work before your own family. And, I came here especially to
visit you.”

“I know, I
know, I’m a terrible sister.”

Alex laughed.

“You’ll be
able to see me when I walk round this corner. Talk soon.” She hung up.

As she rounded
the corner, she saw Alex and waved. A suitcase lay on the floor by his feet.
She wondered how long he was planning on staying, the suitcase took up most of
the doorstep.

“I know it
looks like a lot of stuff,” he said, “but I couldn’t decide what to bring so I
brought everything.”

She put her
arms around his neck and squeezed him tight. It had only been about a week
since she’d last seen him, but she missed him. She missed all her family. That
was the one thing that bothered her about taking the job, she’d barely ever get
to see them.

“I missed you
too,” Alex said, taking a step back, “but it’s fricking freezing out here.”

“It’s the
middle of May, hardly freezing.” She rolled her eyes.

“It’s the UK,” Alex said sarcastically.

“It’s not that
different to Canada.” Jamie laughed.

“A few degrees
Celsius makes a lot of difference.”

Jamie shook
her head. “You’re such a wimp.”

“Just open the
door.”

She wiggled
the key in the lock and pushed the door open. It swung back, and Alex hurried
inside, his suitcase bumping against the backs of his legs in his hurry.

“What have you
got in that suitcase? It looks like it weighs a ton.”

“It does,”
Alex said. He heaved the suitcase onto the small two-seater sofa and clicked
the three locks open.

Jamie watched
as he opened the lid and peeled back a couple of layers of clothing. She’d
always known that Alex liked his clothes and was slightly indecisive when it
came to packing, but this was taking it to a new extreme.

Underneath his
ACDC
t-shirt was something shiny. The silver paper glistened in the few
rays of sunlight which had fought its way through the curtains which she’d
forgotten to pull back that morning.

“Here,” he
said, “this one’s from Mum and Dad.” He passed her a small box wrapped in matt
blue paper.

“What? Why?”
Jamie took a step back.

“It’s your
birthday,” he said. He frowned. “You hadn’t forgotten, had you?

“Everything’s
been a bit busy recently.”

“You forgot
your own birthday. Well, it’s just as well I came to remind you, isn’t it?”

Jamie smiled
gingerly.

“Happy
birthday, big sis.” He kissed her cheek as he handed her the present.
“Thirty-two years old.”

 “They really
shouldn’t have, not after paying for my flight here.” She slid her finger under
each piece of sticky tape, being careful not to rip the paper.

“The flight
was booked a long time in advance. It didn’t cost that much.”

Jamie nodded,
although they both knew that wasn’t true. The flight had been around
five-hundred pounds.

After removing
each piece of sticky tape and rolling it into a little ball, Jamie took the
paper off and folded it in half neatly.

“Hurry up. I
want to know what it is.” Alex took the paper and sticky tape ball away from
her.

“Don’t you know
already?”

Alex shook his
head.

Inside a brown
cardboard box – which had been used to keep the box inside safe and because it
was easier to wrap – was a small, blue velvet jewellery box.

“What is it?
What is it?” Alex rubbed his hands together.

Jamie lifted
the lid slowly. Inside was a silver ring. It was made from two narrow strands
of silver wound together in a wave pattern.

“That’s the
ring Mum usually wears on her middle finger,” Alex peered over her shoulder.
“Try it on.”

“Dad gave her
this when she was my age.” Jamie slid the ring onto her middle finger. It fit
perfectly.

“I love it.
Don’t you love it?” Alex looked curiously at Jamie. “Don’t you like it?”

“I love it,
but she shouldn’t have given it to me. This is her ring. She’s worn it every
day for like … the past thirty years.” She looked at her hand as though she was
wearing an eighteen carat gold ring on it.

“She wants you
to have it.”

“But, what if
I lose it?”

“You won’t.”

Jamie didn’t
look certain.

“Can I give
you my present now?” His eyes were glistening. It was obvious that he was proud
of his choice of present.

She nodded.

He pushed some
more of his clothes aside and pulled out the box wrapped in shiny silver paper.
Now the suitcase looked empty.

“That’s
massive.”

“I know. Not
very suitable for travelling, but I bought it before I knew you were coming
here.”

Jamie had told
her parents the minute she’d been offered the job, but they’d kept it a secret
from Alex for quite a while. They weren’t like normal siblings. They never
argued and they liked to be together all of the time. She couldn’t stand seeing
the look on his face when she told him she was moving away.

Alex bit his
lip as Jamie unwrapped the present and opened the cardboard box. He hoped the
large amount of bubble wrap he’d packed into the box had prevented anything
from breaking.

“Alex, you
shouldn’t have,” Jamie said as she unwrapped the first ball of bubble wrap.

“I knew how
much you liked them.”

Jamie held the
mug up to the light so that she could see the picture clearly. It was a
painting of a Jack Russell shaking, splattering the white background with mud.
“They were eighteen dollars each.”

Alex shrugged.

She put the
mug on the table and unwrapped another ball of bubble wrap. This time it was a
mug with a pug on it. She unwrapped each buddle of bubble wrap in turn, looking
closely at each picture. By the time everything was unwrapped and piled on the
table she had two mugs, two bowls, two large plates and two smaller plates.

“I’ll be
afraid to use them.”

“You have to
use them, or I’ll take them back.” Alex’s expression was stern.

“Alright, I
will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”
Jamie smiled.

“So, where are
we going out tonight?”

“Out?”

“It’s your
birthday. We have to go out. Are there any nice restaurants around here?”

“I don’t know.
Haven’t had a chance to look. If you saw the state of this house when I moved
in, you’d understand.”

“I didn’t like
to say, but–”

“It’s close to
work,” Jamie cut his sentence short. She didn’t need him to tell her that her
new house looked as though it had previously been used as a rubbish tip. She’d
spent her whole life savings on the deposit to rent this house.

“I’m proud
that you’re not still living with Mum and Dad.” Alex looked sentimental. “What
I would give to have my own house.”

“Living with
Mum and Dad isn’t that bad.”

“Na. And, they
still do my washing.”

Alex was
twenty-eight, four years younger than Jamie. She felt slightly sorry for their
parents, sharing a house with a thirty-one year old and a twenty-eight year
old. It was surprising they hadn’t chucked them out years ago.

“Let’s just
walk around until we find somewhere to eat,” Alex said. “I want to shower first
though.”

“How’s the new job?” Alex asked
as they walked passed the police station. The lights were still on and they
could see Danny moving about inside.

“It’s good. I
think … I don’t really fit in.”

He stopped
walking and looked at her. “What do you mean you don’t fit in? You’re great at
your job and you’ve been looking forward to this for months.”

“I know. I
know. It’s just … they can do it without me. I feel like I’m in the way.”

“You’re being
daft.” Alex put his arm around her shoulders. “It was your first day. You’ll
all be getting along fine in no time.”

“Shh.” Jamie
put her finger to her lips. The door to the police station opened, and Danny
walked out. He turned around to lock the door and then looked straight at Jamie
and Alex.

“Jamie,” Danny
walked across the road to join them, “I didn’t think you knew anyone in the
area.”

“I don’t,”
Jamie said.

“I’m her
brother, Alex. I’m visiting for a few weeks.” Alex held out his had.

“Nice to meet
you, Alex. I’m meeting Carl in a pub round the corner. You should join us.”

“Uh … I don’t
think–”

“We’d love
to,” Alex butted in.

Jamie shot him
a ‘what are you doing?’ look but either he didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“Your accent’s
a lot more profound than Jamie’s,” Danny stated.

Jamie looked
away, embarrassed. After a day full of stilted conversations, she’d been
looking forward to some time alone with her brother.

“I guess
that’s because Jamie spent the first four years of her life in the UK, and I was born in Canada.” Alex walked beside Danny, and Jamie was left to walk behind on her
own.

“She never
told me that.”

“The move to Canada was purely for Dad’s work. Funny, now Jamie’s work’s brought her back again.”